Wealthy KRG lets down its people: Iraqi parliament bloc spox

 ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The spokesperson for a major Iraqi parliamentary bloc said on Tuesday that Baghdad does not have a problem with the people of the Kurdistan Region, but its administration. 

“We in Baghdad do not have a problem with the people of the Kurdistan Region, but rather with its government that is oppressing its people,” Ayat Mudhafar, spokesperson for the Iraqi parliament’s Nasr coalition told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Tuesday.

People in the Kurdistan Region have been let down by their government when it comes to finances, Mudhafar claimed. 

“Employees in the Kurdistan Region have sent requests to the Iraqi parliament asking that their salaries be sent directly from Baghdad,” Mudhafar said. 

Employees in the Sulaimani province have requested on several occasions that they receive their salaries directly from Baghdad.

“This is despite the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) having sold its oil, and fully controlling all border crossings within its territory. This raises the question: why are these people struggling?”

Several leading politicians in Sulaimani province have suggested that it split from the KRG and deal directly with Baghdad as a solution to the ongoing economic crisis.

A Sulaimani’s provincial council member from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party told the Iraqi state-owned al-Sabah newspaper on Monday, “In case Baghdad and Erbil do not reach an agreement, there could be an additional section to the budget bill ensuring the province of Sulaimani deals with the federal government directly.”

In an interview with Rudaw’s Snur Majid on Sunday, Sulaimani governor Haval Abubakir said that decentralization is an option on the table.

Mudhafar emphasized that their request from the KRG delegation is to abide by the constitution in order to have a common understanding with Bagdhad.

“We hope they abide by agreements – because previously they had not abided by agreements made,” Mudhafar added.

“In regards to pressure being put on the KRG, it is not only from the Shiite parties – but as we all know protests broke out in Iraqi provinces asking that there should be serious approach from the federal government toward the Kurdistan Region,” she said. 

The protesters “deemed it unfair that they are struggling from lacking basic services and the Kurdistan Region gets their share of the budget without handing over oil or non-oil revenues.”

The Kurdistan Region’s share of the federal budget has attracted great opposition from Shiite MPs in the parliament.

Last month, more than 100 Iraqi MPs, mostly Shiite, signed a letter asking that the 2021 budget bill obliges the Kurdistan Region to hand over all its oil to the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) in exchange for federal funds.

“Iraq’s revenue is federal. The oil of Basra, the Kurdistan Region, and any other province shall be under the supervision of the Iraqi government, and the Kurdistan Region should abide by this,” Alaa Rubai, an MP from the Sairoon alliance – the parliament’s biggest political bloc, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – told Rudaw’s Mustafa Goran on Wednesday.

The KRG has struggled to pay its civil servants in full and on time for five years, due to the war against the Islamic State (ISIS), economic mismanagement and crisis, disputes with Baghdad, as well as a drop in oil prices.

Baghdad failed to pass a budget in 2020 because of political turmoil, record low oil prices, and the coronavirus pandemic. In November, Iraqi lawmakers passed the Fiscal Deficit Coverage Bill approving loans to cover civil servant salaries for the last two months of the year.

The bill passed with a majority vote, despite a walkout staged by Kurdish MPs angered that Erbil is obliged to hand over an unspecified amount of oil in exchange for funds – a clause they said was not in the original bill.

The 2021 budget bill was approved by Iraq’s Council of Ministers on December 21. Parliament has met twice to discuss the bill.

KRG delegation, led by deputy PM Qubad Talabani, returned to Baghdad on Sunday to finalize negotiations with Iraqi parliament parties and the financial committee, after not reaching a final agreement in their last visit earlier this month.

The delegation’s trip to Baghdad should be its “last visit and negotiation”, KRG spokesperson Jotiar Adil told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Tuesday, because the Iraqi parliament is expected to vote on the bill “in the next five days.”

The delegation has “reached an agreement with the Iraqi government”, but the end result depends on the vote of approval on the Kurdistan Region’s entitlements in the bill by Shiite members of parliament, Adil said.